If you want to go here, your head needs to be in the game. You can either be a crazy party person and drink and smoke all the time.. But that's not what this school is for. This school will get you a job, IF you do the work while you're here. So if you're planning on slacking off, and if the most important thing to you about college is partying or friends, it's just not going to cut it. It took me a good semester to realize it, but once you step in here, you are basically starting your career, WHICH if you are serious about it and want to make good money in the future, you will take advantage of.

If I were to list all the complaints I have about this money-gobbling corporation operating under the guise of an elite institution it would produce a review as lengthy and excruciatingly tedious as the two years I spent suffering there. My whole purpose in writing this is not to engage in ad hominem attacks against the school or any of its students (although my own anger at having wasted my parents' money here may cause me to do so anyway) but rather to warn any prospective students, specifically incoming freshman, against making the same mistake I did.

I do know that NYU's various graduate programs are prestigious and perhaps worth the money, or at least I assume so based on the arrogance of most TAs I had. Stern too is perhaps worth the money, but I would warn against entering any other program. Tisch students walk around with a variety of offbeat haircuts and vintage floral-patterned clothing as if by being admitted they have already achieved some kind of artistic success. Based on the level of talent I witnessed among students from a variety of programs within Tisch (acting, dramatic writing, film & television) the actual ability required to be accepted is fairly low. There are obviously some tremendously talented people in Tisch for it to have gained the reputation it has, but most of the kids I met in Tisch are in desperate need of a reality check. I would be curious to know the ratio of graduates who have gone on to achieve success vs the number of those who have gotten no closer to Broadway than waiting tables at the Times Square Applebee's.

That being said, my main issue is with CAS. Rather than being able to take classes I wanted (which all filled up before I could register for them anyway) I found myself forced to take a variety of classes I had no desire to take in order to satisfy the College Core Curriculum, formerly the MAP program. I am aware that most colleges have their general education requirements, but these classes were invariably unpleasant and left me feeling as though I were being scammed. Their quality ranged from mediocre to appalling, one I particularly recall as atrocious being a science class with a professor who spoke broken English which I rarely attended and still got an A in. I felt great guilt at skipping classes considering the school's price tag, but even more galling was the fact that this school had the nerve to charge $60000-$70000 for an education no better than the one I received attending a public high school for free. My fellow students were no brighter than the ones at this midwestern public high school yet carried themselves with unearned arrogance. The Liberal Studies Program, created to allow the school to make even more profits while maintaining the illusion of operating an elite school in CAS, ended up flooding my classes with people who were (no better way to say it) dumber than a buried box of rocks. The students who were actually intelligent were so obnoxiously certain of themselves as to make one prefer the company of dummies. Classes were generally unfriendly environments, with students either staring obliviously at Apple products or whispering to a never-changing one or two friends while simultaneously glancing at Apple products. Worst of all, I found myself able to skip classes and reading assignments with little consequences as to the grades I ended up receiving. My GPA wound up being a 3.9 and I feel I put in nothing near the amount of effort one would expect to go into the attainment of such a GPA at a supposedly high-quality university. Seeing as I'm not a savant with an abnormal level of brilliance or anything close to that, I would have to blame this on both the aforementioned idiots around me making me look better and apathetic professors desperate to finish grading papers as rapidly as possible in order to go about enjoying the wonderful university-provided faculty housing our tuition goes towards paying for. The social scene here is so appallingly bad I can't go into it here without breaking my pledge to remain concise twice as badly as I already have. All I will say is that unless you are a girl rich and pretty enough to have a fake ID and get into clubs you will end up spending most of your time tottering drunkenly around a series of dilapidated dorm rooms (or, only marginally better for the lack of RAs, dilapidated apartments). I had some friends, but frankly it felt more like we hung out together out of a desperate desire to avoid loneliness than any actual emotional attachment. As a result, I was incredibly lonely even with supposed friends. Since leaving, I haven't talked to any of these people and frankly don't miss any of them in the slightest. I am now attending a public state school receiving an education better than that which I got at NYU for a third of the cost and surrounded by friendly people without personality disorders. Please people, don't make the same mistake I did! Don't give that corporation hundreds of thousands of dollars just so you can walk around pretending to be Carrie Bradshaw or in a Woody Allen film. Attend a state school or an actual elite private college if you can get in, but don't waste that kind of money just to be in New York. You can move anywhere you want after you graduate, and it will be a lot easier to start your life without crushing piles of student loan debt.